Abstract

The most recent National Waste Information Baseline Report (2012) shows that South Africa generated 108 million tonnes of waste in 2011. Some 97 million tonnes of this was disposed of at landfill. A rule of thumb calculation is that landfills that receive roughly 25 000 tonnes of solid waste a month should be able to produce about 1 MW by converting landfill gas (LFG) to energy. This means that South Africa could potentially produce up to 3 880 MW of electricity from landfills alone. Despite this great potential, there have only been a handful of LFG-to-energy projects in South Africa, and only a fraction of these are run by municipalities, despite the fact that eThekwini Municipality established South Africa's first LFG-to-energy project, which now produces 45 000 MWh/year.